Diabetes mellitus often requires insulin treatment to establish proper metabolic control (comprising mainly glycaemic control, but also other metabolic parameters benefit from insulin treatment). The established practise of insulin treatment is to administer the insulin product once or more often per day, optionally in combination with other treatment modalities, as described in available treatment guidelines. Intravenous and subcutaneous insulin infusion is also used in clinical practise.
One widely used insulin treatment option is to administer a long acting insulin product, also referred to as basal insulin, to cover the insulin need of the patient wholly or partially. The long acting insulin is administered once or more often per day, at the same time every day, and is used on both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes as well as for other forms of insulin requiring disease states (hyperglycaemia of any cause).
Currently, the treatment of diabetes, both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, relies to an increasing extent on the so-called intensive insulin treatment. According to this regimen, the patients are treated with multiple daily insulin injections comprising one or two daily injections of a long acting insulin, given at the same time every day, to cover the basal insulin requirement supplemented by bolus injections of a rapid acting insulin to cover the insulin requirement related to meals.
The current practice in management of diabetes and hyperglycaemia is set forth in e.g.:                IDF Clinical Guidelines Task Force. Global Guideline for Type 2 Diabetes. Brussels: International Diabetes Federation, 2005, http://www.idf.org/webdata/docs/IDF %20GGT2D.pdf.        IDF Clinical Guidelines Task Force. Guideline for Management of PostMeal Glucose. Brussels: International Diabetes Federation, 2007, http://www.idf.org/webdata/docs/Guideline_PMG_final.pdf,        D. M. Nathan, J. B. Buse, M. B. Davidson, E. Ferrannini, R. R. Holman, R. Sherwin, and B. Zinman. Management of hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes: a consensus algorithm for the initiation and adjustment of therapy: update regarding thiazolidinediones: a consensus statement from the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. Diabetes care 31 (1):173-175, 2008.        
Reviews relating to basal insulin analogues and their characteristics and current clinical use can i.a. be found in:                T. Heise and T. R. Pieber. Towards peakless, reproducible and long-acting insulins. An assessment of the basal analogues based on isoglycaemic clamp studies. Diabetes Obes Metab 9 (5):648-659, 2007, and        A. H. Barnett. A review of basal insulins. Diabet Med 20 (11):873-885, 2003.        